The man fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday morning has been identified as 37-year-old Alex Pretti.   

Pretti was an intensive care unit nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis, the city where he lived. He was a keen outdoorsman and biked trails near his home. 

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Pretti’s father, Michael, said he wanted to “make a difference in this world.”

“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital,” he said in a statement shared with several media outlets. 

“Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact,” he added. 

Multiple videos of Saturday’s shooting show Border Patrol agents spraying Pretti with a substance and pinning him to the ground before the shooting. Moments before the confronation, Pretti was attempting to help a woman protester who was being pushed by a federal agent.

Pretti’s family said he had been motivated to join the protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after the killing of another Minneapolis resident, 37-year-old mother of three, Renee Nicole Good, by a federal agent just over two weeks ago.

Read more: Federal Agents Kill Another Person in Minneapolis Immigration Crackdown

“He cared about people deeply and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset,” Michael Pretti told the Associated Press. “He felt that doing the protesting was a way to express that, you know, his care for others.”

He said he had a conversation with his son earlier this month in which he told him to be careful while protesting.

“We had this discussion with him two weeks ago or so, you know, that go ahead and protest, but do not engage, do not do anything stupid, basically,” Michael Pretti said. “And he said he knows that. He knew that.”

At a news conference on Saturday, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Pretti was a “lawful gun owner” with a permit to carry a firearm in public and only had a few parking tickets.

Dr. Dimitri Drekonja, a former colleague of Pretti’s at the VA Hospital, described him as “a kind person who lived to help.”

“He had such a great attitude. We’d chat between patients about trying to get in a mountain bike ride together,” Drekonja said in a post on BlueSky. “Will never happen now,” he added. 

Born in Illinois, Pretti graduated from Preble High School in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 2006. He went on to receive a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota in 2011, before attaining a nursing license. 

Pretti was devoted to his patients at the VA hospital. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents professional employees affiliated with the Minneapolis VA Hospital, said Pretti “dedicated his life to serving American veterans.”

“While details of the incident are still emerging, one fact is already clear: this tragedy did not happen in a vacuum. It is the direct result of an administration that has chosen reckless policy, inflammatory rhetoric, and manufactured crisis over responsible leadership and de-escalation,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement.

After watching coverage of the shooting on the news, Mac Randolph recognized Pretti as the man who cared for his father, Terry Randolph, during his final days in December 2024.

“He spent three, four days in the ICU and explained everything that would happen when they turned off the oxygen,” he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “He was as compassionate a person as you could be.”

After his father passed, Randolph said Pretti took his father, an Air Force veteran, on an “honorary walk” around the facility on his gurney, draped in an American flag.

“You could see that it wasn’t the first time he had done that,” he said.

Randolph said he felt compelled to share a video on social media in which Pretti reads a final tribute to his father, Terry, who passed away at 77-years-old.

“Today, we remember that freedom is not free,” Pretti says in the video. “We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it.”

A man was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis on Saturday morning, the second fatal shooting in just over two weeks by federal authorities in the city.

The incident follows the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Good by a federal agent less than three miles away, and comes as the city was already convulsed by mass protests calling for an end to the surge of immigration agents in the state.

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The victim was named as Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and intensive care unit nurse who treated veterans. His family said he was motivated to join protests after Good’s killing.

Several videos of the shooting show an altercation taking place around 9 am when a woman protester was pushed to the ground by a Border Patrol agent. When Pretti attempts to stand between the agent and the woman, the agent pepper-sprays him in the face. More agents join the fray and tackle Pretti to the ground as he is disoriented. As a group of agents restrain Pretti on the ground, one emerges from the melee with a gun, and soon after, a shot rings out, then several more in quick succession. At least 10 shots were fired in around five seconds, including several as Pretti lay motionless on the ground.

Read more: Minnesotans Shutter Businesses and Call Off Work in Economic Blackout Day to Protest ICE

President Donald Trump responded to the shooting in a lengthy post on Truth Social that called immigration agents “patriots” and claimed they were in Minneapolis because of “massive Monetary Fraud” and “Illegal Criminals that were allowed to infiltrate the State.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a press conference on Saturday afternoon that Pretti had not been in trouble with the police before.

“The only interaction that we are aware of with law enforcement has been for traffic tickets and we believe he is a lawfully gun owner with a permit to carry,” O’Hara said.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) gave a detailed account of the shooting in a statement that was contradicted by several videos shot by bystanders at the scene. The agency said it was carrying out a “targeted operation” when an individual approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun, pictures of which it shared with the media. It said officers attempted to disarm the man, but he “violently resisted.”

“Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene,” the statement continued. It added: “[T]his looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

But several videos showing the lead-up to the fatal shooting show Pretti filming a group of Border Patrol officers with his phone in his right hand, with his left hand empty. The video shows an agent pepper-spraying Pretti in the face and, together with several other officers, dragging him to the ground. That is when the fatal shooting occurs.

Read more: Fatal ICE Shooting Sparks Scrutiny of Killings in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown

The incident is the latest in a series of shootings in which the DHS claims the victim was threatening the life of an agent, only for video evidence to later contradict the claim. After the shooting of Renee Good, the DHS accused her of “attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism,” only for video evidence to show her turning her car away, and the agent positioned to the side of her vehicle when he fired the fatal shot.

Several other federal officials gave accounts of events that were similarly inaccurate to those given by DHS.

Pretti’s parents, Michael and Susan Pretti, found out about the death of their son when they were called by an Associated Press reporter. As of Saturday evening, the family had still not heard from anyone at a federal law enforcement agency about their son’s death, according to the AP.

In a statement released to the media, the family criticised the “sickening lies told about our son by the administration.”

“Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed,” the statement said.

Saturday’s shooting prompted a wave of anger from local politicians, many of whom have been calling for the Trump Administration to bring an end to its immigration surge following weeks of violent encounters with Minnesotans, including the use of pepper spray and the arrest of peaceful protesters.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz described the shooting as “sickening” and called on President Trump to end his immigration crackdown in the state.

“I just spoke with the White House after another horrific shooting by federal agents this morning. Minnesota has had it. This is sickening,” Walz said in a post on X.

“The President must end this operation. Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.”

Later, he urged people protesting the shooting to do so peacefully.

“We want peace, they want chaos,” the governor said of the federal government. “We cannot and will not give them what they want.”

Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said: To the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress who have stood silent: Get ICE out of our state NOW.

O’Hara, in his press conference, called for greater discipline from the estimated 3,000 federal immigration agents in the city.

“Our demand today is for those federal agencies that are operating in our city to do so with the same discipline, humanity and integrity that effective law enforcement in this country demands,” he said.

A few hundred protesters gathered at the scene of the shooting in south Minneapolis by noon, where they scuffled with federal agents who had blocked off the intersection. Protesters screamed “I smell Nazis” at the federal agents and shouted at them to “go home.”

The agents deployed tear gas and used pepper-spray as they fought running battles with protesters.

The shooting comes a day after thousands took to the streets across Minnesota on Friday, closing down businesses and calling out of work in a mass protest against the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown in the state.

The “Ice Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth and Freedom” demonstration, organized by community leaders, members of the clergy, and labor unions, called for a “no work, no school, no shopping” economic blackout.

Trump, in his Saturday afternoon post, accused Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Walz of “inciting Insurrection.”

“Where are the local Police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE Officers? The Mayor and the Governor called them off? It is stated that many of these Police were not allowed to do their job, that ICE had to protect themselves — Not an easy thing to do!” he wrote.

As night fell across Minneapolis, many residents set out candles in their windows to memorialize Pretti. Several vigils were held across the city. A New York Times reporter visited one at Painter Park, near Pretti’s home, where more than 100 people gathered with candles and sang the opening lines to ‘This Little Light of Mine.’